The following message is by pastor John Piper.

More information from Desiring God Ministries is available at

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Desiring God.org.

Let's pray together.

Gracious Father we have in these services sung great and glorious things about you and your son and his coming, his lordship and his

saving. And I want to so preach now in a way that honors Christ.

I want Christ to be exalted.

And so would you show us in our hearts and in our minds tonight in a very deep and

compelling and self authenticating way that Jesus Christ is the greatest good in the universe.

He is an objective good and he is good for us. He is the best thing, the best person, the best beauty,

the best truth, the best reality there is. Come. Display Christ as we continue in worship over your

word I pray in his name. Amen.

It is a wonderful thing that if you know the word and simply believe and teach to yourself and your children the simple straightforward sentences of the Bible,

you will spare yourself hundreds of follies in every generation.

If you just take simple sentences of the Bible, believe them and build them into yourself and your family or friends.

You and they will be spared so many detours, so many rabbit trails.

And what's so remarkable about this,

and the reason it hits me the way it does,

is that for this to happen,

for this kind of liberation of your life in every generation to happen you do not

need to be an expert in the latest philosophical fad or the latest psychological angle on behavior or the

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